Peart attributed that loss to the death 10 months later of his wife, Jacqueline Taylor. She was killed at 19 in an automobile accident in Brighton, Ontario. In his 2002 autobiography, “Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road,” he revealed that he had told his bandmates to “consider me retired” at least as far back as 1997 at the funeral of his daughter Selena Taylor. I would rather set it aside than face the predicament described in our song ‘ Losing It.’”īut that was far from the first time he’d referenced the idea of retirement. And it does not pain me to realize that, like all athletes, there comes a time to. In a 2015 interview with Drumhead Magazine, Peart said: “Lately Olivia has been introducing me to new friends at school as ‘My dad - he’s a retired drummer.’ True to say - funny to hear. 4 on the Billboard album chart, and nine more studio albums reached the Top 10 up through “Snakes & Arrows” in 2007. The 1980s were even more rewarding for the band, as “Permanent Waves” in 1980 shot to No. Rush released several more albums in the ’70s that showed slow but steady sales, the most successful being 1976’s “2112,” which spent 34 weeks on Billboard’s 200 Albums chart and was certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Assn. “Neil Peart wasn’t just the new drummer he was the spark that pushed them to greatness,” the Ultimate Classic Rock website asserted in naming “Fly by Night” to its list of the top 100 ’70s rock albums.
The combination of such fanciful lyrics with cavorting music composed by Lee and Lifeson clicked with fans and gave Rush an identity. Peart later explained that he didn’t know what “tobes of Hades” meant but that it was a phrase his father had uttered on occasion.
They delivered, and at 14, he started classes at the Peninsula Conservatory of Music, and in short time joined his first band, the Eternal Triangle, with whom he performed his first drum solo. His parents presented him on his 13th birthday with a pair of proper drumsticks, a practice drum and some beginner’s lessons, and the promise that if he kept with it for a year, he’d get a real drum kit. He began to develop his skills as a musician with lessons on piano, his first percussion instrument.īut it was drumming that seemed built into his DNA, as he would use a pair of chopsticks to tap out rhythms on objects around the Peart household. He spoke of a warm, happy childhood, and of developing an interest in music as an adolescent, listening to radio stations in Canada and the northeast U.S. He grew up on the family farm in Hagersville, outside Hamilton. 12, 1952, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, the eldest of four children of Glenn and Betty Peart.